'It's A Sin' Series, Set During AIDS Epidemic, Resonates During COVID-19
Pop culture has a genius for transforming painful history into enjoyable entertainment. It can turn Nazi POW camps into the sitcom Hogan's Heroes . It can spin the murder of Israeli athletes into the...
View Article'Minari' Follows A Family's Immigration With Humor, Humanity And Hope
The history of film is inseparable from immigration. Newcomers to America didn't merely pack the nickelodeons and movie palaces, they invented Hollywood. Ever since silent film days, filmmakers have...
View ArticleBritain's MI5 Spy Agency Proves More Comic Than Tragic In 'Slough House'
There are scads of talented spy novelists, but the ones who matter capture something essential about their historical moment. Back in the 1930s and '40s, Eric Ambler nailed the sense of ordinary people...
View Article'Bloodlands' Police Thriller Doesn't Trivialize Northern Ireland's Troubles
I was maybe 12 when I first saw The Third Man , the noir classic set in a post-World War II Vienna bursting with expressionist atmospherics and jaunty amorality. Ever since, I've been drawn to tales...
View Article'Another Round'? This Tipsy Danish Film Asks, Why Not?
In one of his many hymns to drinking, Charles Bukowski, that great bard of the barstool, explained the eternal promise of drunkenness. "It [takes] away the obvious," he wrote, "and maybe if you could...
View ArticleAn Immigrant Becomes A Human Canvas In This Sly Film About Art And Freedom
If any story has been inescapable this century, it's surely immigration. The subject has spawned so many newscasts, books, movies and TV shows that it takes real imagination to find an invigorating...
View ArticleNo Kidding: Japan's Kidnaping Epic 'Lady Joker' Will Hook You
Copyright 2021 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . DAVE DAVIES, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Our critic-at-large, John Powers, says he's never read a crime novel quite like "Lady Joker." It's a...
View ArticleRachel Cusk's 'Second Place' Offers Sharp Perceptions About Love And Creativity
Copyright 2021 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. The English novelist Rachel Cusk is best known here for her three books known as the Outline Trilogy. Her...
View ArticleA Small Town Becomes A Hotbed Of Festering Secrets In 'Whitstable Pearl'
Copyright 2021 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. The new British mystery series "Whitstable Pearl" is set in a small city on the English coast. The show,...
View Article'The Netanyahus' Turns The Campus Novel Into A Sly Fable About History And...
Copyright 2021 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . DAVE DAVIES, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. In the new novel "The Netanyahus," the American writer Joshua Cohen offers a fictionalized version of a...
View ArticleAn Old Murder Is 'Unforgotten' In This Crime Drama's 4th And Finest Season
If you regularly watch police shows, you know that very few of them make you feel anything. For every Mare of Easttown , there are 20 fast-paced crime dramas — from CSI to Line of Duty — that pass off...
View Article1963 Novel 'The Stone Face' Has New Edition — And It Couldn't Be More Timely
Copyright 2021 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, in for Terry Gross. "The Stone Face" is a 1963 novel by the Black reporter and...
View Article5 Hit Men Board A 'Bullet Train' In This Fast And Fun Japanese Thriller
Back in the 1960s, the late, great film critic Pauline Kael wrote an influential essay called, " Trash, Art and the Movies ." In it she championed the pleasure we take from movies with no artistic...
View ArticleThere's Plenty Of 'Guilt' To Go Around In This Scottish Hit-And-Run Thriller
Ever since Watergate, it's become commonplace to say that it's not the crime but the cover-up that takes you down. While this may be true of political or financial malfeasance, sometimes a crime is so...
View ArticleHeroism Exacts A Daunting Price In 'Wife Of A Spy' And 'Azor'
When we're young, it's easy to imagine ourselves as always being on the right side of history. We like to think that, if we were trapped in cruel or barbaric societies, we would be the brave ones...
View Article'Passing' puts a fresh spin on an old-fashioned story about race and identity
Copyright 2021 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. In the new movie "Passing," based on the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen, Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga...
View ArticleHBO Max's low-key gem 'Sort Of' is funny, tender and humane
It may be hard to believe, but modesty was once considered a virtue. These days, of course, our world is dominated by people — and by expressions of pop culture — that keep telling you they're big and...
View ArticleFrom Steph Curry to 'Squid Game,' this year-end list will surprise and...
Although the world began slowly opening up this year, I still spent countless hours in my home plowing through movies, TV shows and books, many of which I reviewed on this show. As 2021 comes to an...
View ArticleIn 'Vigil,' a claustrophobic detective chases a murderer — on a submarine
If we leave aside The Beatles' yellow one, submarines have a pretty dim reputation in popular culture. They get attacked by a giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea , become a wartime hellhole in...
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